Aunt Lorena lifted her eyebrows very, very high. I smiled.
“What are you laughing at, Azalea?” she asked sharply.
“At your Gothic eyebrows, dearest Auntie,” I said. Then I kissed her.
“Don’t ask me to be too dignified,” I begged. “I’m only Azalea.”
“Azalea Knox is a very pleasing and interesting young woman of a good deal of importance in the world, if she would only realize it,” she said.
I looked at her a moment.
“She’s not so very, very happy,” I said. The tears came in her eyes, and her eyebrows were not pointed at all. Really, Aunt Lorena is a dear. You just have to break through her crust. The only trouble is that the crust grows over, and you have to keep breaking through. It makes you feel a little like an Eskimo, fishing.
“I am truly sorry,” she said. “But I think if she is a really obedient and patient girl that some day she will be very happy, and that she will thank the friends who now seem to her to be afflicting her.”
We didn’t say anything for a few minutes.